That Music List

Saturday, 3 October 2026

LIST 274 - 03/10/2026

(International Strike Force - Cumberland Arms, Newcastle-upon-Tyne 08/07/2000. Picture is author's own)

Hello again,

Firstly, a little apology if reading this blog has started to feel a bit of a feat of endurance this past couple of weeks. It's only occurred to me whilst compiling this one that with List #274 I've now gone twelve in a row without throwing in any sort of special or one-off by way of relief. That's the longest such sequence in the seventeen-year history of this blog, by two.

Perhaps the additional features introduced since I came back in January have added sufficient variety to stop things getting too samey, but even so.

There are actually a couple of specials more or less compiled and ready to share with you, including the first collection of cover versions since List #217 in late 2016; and in addition I did promise at least one more Feature Fest before the year was out. Trick now is working out how soon to drop these in once done.

If you can't wait that long for something a bit different (and why should you), perhaps I can recommend List #201, which is one of the latest to which I've returned in order to sort out the wonky text formatting and repair any broken links.

It's entitled The Many Guises of Bobby Wratten, and features a representative sample of works by, collaborations with and covers of the one songwriter whose output has meant the most to me my entire adult life. And perhaps has to some of you, too.

***

In terms of this week's fare, Then and Now returns to enable me to say three words I wasn't anticipating committing to print any time soon - new Seefeel album.

Away even longer - fifteen years - than Warp stablemates Boards of Canada, the release of the Sol.Hz long-player was not premiered with any of that act's enigmatic tasters, videotapes and the like.

It's no less deserving of fanfare for all that, however. Whilst not a victory lap as such, Sol.Hz certainly acknowledges and references many of Mark Clifford and Sarah Peacock's previous recorded work, albeit with some of the more abrasive percussive tendencies smoothed off or dispensed with altogether as a predominately ambient feel is aimed for. Not much in here thuds like, say, Tied.

I've also noted and appreciated the occasional nod, on tracks such as AM Flares, to the watery guitar washes of Cocteau Twins, with whom the original four-piece Seefeel toured the UK and mainland Europe in the early-mid 1990s. (My younger brother and his schoolmate, devoted Cocteaus fans both at the time, had one of their nearest things to a rock 'n' roll moment when their loitering outside the stage door of the Manchester Academy in early 1994 earned them a pre-gig football kickabout with assorted members of both bands. I digress).

Other new or recent-ish stuff this week comes from Sylvan Esso, Alien Chicks, Heron & Crane, Orchids and One Dove side project Montjuïc, Perennial and reactivated Californian indiepop veterans The Autocollants.

The last-named, nearly but not quite doing a Panixphere in taking over thirty years to release a debut album (out on Shelflife Records and licensed in the UK to Nick Godfrey's Precious Recordings of London imprint), could actually have been properly inserted into a Tangle of Jangle triple bill. Come to think of it, with Caramel and also Bart and Friends included this week, I've practically included that feature by stealth anyway.

Further probing of the Shelflife website confirms the release of a split single earlier this year featuring The Autocollants and their heroes The Cat's Miaow, like the aforementioned Bart and Friends a band which can claim Australian indiepop's ubiquitous Bart Cummings among their number. My love of The Cat's Miaow and successor band Hydroplane is a matter of record on this blog and elsewhere, so I'll offer you only prohibitively short odds on one of the contributions from the former (apparently songs written last century but newly recorded) featuring on a List in the very near future.

28 years earlier than that Shelflife/Precious collaboration, there was the Troubleman Unlimited/Slampt Underground Organisation joint release Taking a Chance on Chances, a fine document of all that was right and good in turn of the century UK and US DIY punk/indiepop. Showcasing one act from each side of the pond seemed the way to go with this one, hence a selection from both Assembly Line People Program and International Strike Force.

In the latter's case this is horribly overdue. Having named-dropped them a few times during the lifetime of That Music List, usually in the context of important northeast England DIY acts of the 1990s, it occurred to me that I've never actually included a track by International Strike Force before now - only ever their previous incarnation Golden Starlet. Oops.

A fierce, feisty, funny, invigorating proposition live, more so than the fairly static photo from my archive above gives them any credit for, singer/guitarist Ms C and company are one of so many acts from around then who can count themselves unlucky not to have existed at a time when a place on any Indietracks festival line-up, and the adoration of many new fans there, could have been almost guaranteed.

Saturday, 26 September 2026

LIST 273 - 26/09/2026

(The Piney Gir Country Roadshow - Tapestry Goes West festival, Margam Park, Port Talbot 10/08/2007. Pictures are author's own)

Hello again,

Heaven knows how the photos at the top of this week's List will turn out, taken as they were 19 years ago on a temperamental first generation digital camera.

However, including a contemporaneous track by The Piney Gir Country Roadshow this week was all the excuse I needed to include these snaps of Piney herself, and permit myself a bit of time reminiscing about the Tapestry Goes West festival in August 2007 at which they were taken.

This would have been a year before my first trips to either Latitude or Indietracks, so my first outdoor festival experience of any sort (indoor ones had been attended for up to twelve years prior). Unfamiliar with that sort of festival-going as I was up until then, I nevertheless knew sufficient to know that Tapestry's mixture of music, jousting, nettle ale, archery, walks around ruins and ostriches probably wasn't a strictly typical one. From 2003 to 2005, when this brainchild of club impresario Barry Stilwell had taken place in Cornwall, it had similarly juxtaposed live acts against a no less incompatible spaghetti western theme.

(Margam Castle, Margam House and Margam ostriches - Tapestry Goes West festival, Margam Park, Port Talbot 10/08/2007. Pictures are author's own)

Perhaps that's one of the reasons why Indietracks also appealed so much subsequently - indiepop, steam trains, owls and can crushing aren't always found on the same bill, either. I like variety. And the Tapestry bill also offered that in abundance despite a relatively modest total of only around 30-odd acts across two stages on two days.

Here was my first sighting in the flesh of gnarly one-man band Seasick Steve, not yet a year since breaking out to a wider audience but still some time before the full exposition of his former life as Steve Leach, frontman of disco act Crystal Grass (as sampled by S-Express).

It would be a toss-up as to who drew the biggest crowd of the weekend, either Steve or mysterious, Bacofoil-clad proggers Chrome Hoof. The latter won the audience participation prize of the weekend, at least, leading all those present on a procession - accompanied, with singer Lola Olafisoye chanting - at the conclusion of their set before burning some sort of effigy in an oil drum. You don't get that everywhere.

My fellow travellers were particularly looking forward to seeing psychedelic Medieval revivalists Circulus, as - on the strength of such as My Body is Made of Sunlight, shared in the very first List - was I. We didn't quite get our wish, the band's autocratic founder Michael Tyack - think The League of Gentleman's Ollie Plimsolls with a greater predilection for a cape and pointy shoes - having recently fired almost all of the band and continuing here with just the crumhorn player still in tow.

Those fans intent on still throwing themselves about to Power to the Pixies et al, regardless of the lack of any percussive aid, duly did, but it wasn't quite what many of us had in mind. Buy the first three Circulus albums - and maybe Tom Cox's writings on Michael also - and remember them that way instead.

My own record shopping list increased incrementally following Tapestry weekend, notably to include the then new to me Threatmantics, a south Wales band at a south Wales festival. Once I'm finally sufficiently happy with my Welsh language special List to publish it on these pages, you can be certain their often keys/bass/viola-led fare will be making an appearance.

From memory Tapestry Goes West lasted for only one more renewal after our 2007 attendance, destined to become just another small chapter in the multifaceted story of boutique British music festivals from the late c20th onwards.

Nevertheless, I'm glad it afforded this greenhorn a nice enough experience so as not to have put me off open-air festivals forever. I would definitely not have coped with a Glastonbury (comfortably more than double the £60 weekend price of Tapestry in 2007) first time up, though I suspect I wouldn't even now.

***

Other than overlong dribblings about a defunct Welsh music festival, what can I offer you this week?

1) New or recent things from a bunch of acts all making their first appearances on a List, namely Melanie A Davis & The Madness, Planette Automatic, Denzel Curry & Kenneth Blume, Inner Magic ft Ruth Radelet, Salt Water Criminals and Massachusetts-based mod-poppers The Chelsea Curve.

In the case of the last-named, this is very sadly a posthumous appearance, The Chelsea Curve's singer-bassist Linda Bean-Pardee (also briefly a member of Gang Of Four and a graphic designer of some repute) having been lost to cancer in mid-August.

A fierce, joyful spirit, by all accounts, and the Boston music scene is doubtless poorer for her passing.

2) Another posthumous release, albeit one that would have been harder to foresee, Cocoon is one of eight newly discovered tracks recorded by much-loved bass/sax/drums trio Morphine in 1999, shortly before singer Mark Sandman's fatal heart attack. Received wisdom was that 2009's At Your Service double CD of unreleased tracks completely cleared the vaults of Morphine recordings for ever after. Not so.

The familiarity of Mark's bass rumble and Dana Colley's tenor sax mark this out as unmistakably Morphine within seconds, and there's a comfort as well as a sadness in that.

3) Straight In At... returns this week, with a play of four of the new entries from the official UK top 100 singles chart on today's date 22 years ago. By 2004 we were still in the peak period of chart entry volatility, and the (count them) 29 tracks I had to choose from this time were far from a record high total.

I could have gone for some better known tracks by Groove Armada (I See You Baby, no less), Ian Brown or Muse, or the week's highest entry from one of Donny Osmond's occasional commercial rehabilitations. My four choices are my clear favourites of the lot, however, Brian Wilson and Devendra Banhart's having even both been bought on the week of release.

The offering by Zen is a representative example - and an excellent, addictive example - of a track from one of the dozens of house, hard house or drum 'n' bass double A-side 12 inches that were peppering the lower reaches of the top 100 by the mid-2000s; some with tracks by the same artist, others split between two.

Conundrum sounds for all the world like something I could have added to the Dance Hall at Peel Acres feature by now, and John Peel did indeed play plenty of Zen St George's bountiful output, but not this example if the Peel Wiki is (as it usually is) taken to be true. The great man would pass away just four weeks later.

(NB I've just realised how much mention of death there is this week - I do apologise to you if this has proven in any way triggering).

4) More Italo disco, this time from 1983 and featuring a performance in the video in front of what resembles the then set of popular teenagers' quiz show Blockbusters (also launched in 1983; a coincidence, surely...).

Happy Children was a curious beast, not from a musical perspective - the stabby keys and long intro were copybook Italo disco - but in being a lyrical call to 1980s Italian children to transcend their hard lives, as delivered by a posh kid whose life probably won't be nearly so hard either way.

Pietro Paolo Pelandi, the man who is P. Lion, is the son of the count of the Alzano Lombardo province in northern Italy, y'see. Doubtless he meant well, but less charitable observers may liken it to a minor British royal writing an anti-poverty track and dedicating it to the hundreds of thousands of kids on their uppers in such as England's historic Red Wall political constituencies. The reception may not be the most sympathetic.

5) Mid-1980s David Bowie as seldom heard before, given a minimal, almost whispered German language reinterpretation. It's a source of personal irritation to me how little of cerebral San Franciscan synth-prodders Helen Lundy Trio's output is available anywhere online, and adding some tracks from their eponymous debut album onto YouTube remains a rainy day to-do job. For now at least there's this, as taken from early c21st Bowie tribute album After Low.

6) A reminder of the briefish but lovely existence of Finnmark!, as the name implies an unashamedly Scandiphile indiepop act based around the talents of former Just Handshakes (We're British) bassist Edward Forth.

Owner of, by Pete Green's reckoning, the most lugubrious voice they'd ever heard in indiepop (a compliment, for the avoidance of doubt), Edward's tasteful choice of covers (Guided by Voices) and knowing references (Considering a Move to Sweden likely requires no further explanation) always made for an enjoyable set on the occasions our paths crossed; and Brännö, a paean to the Southern Göteborg island of the same name, endures as probably the act's most popular track on account of its appearance on the 2013 Indietracks companion compilation.

I wonder whether Edward remembers the aftermath of a Just Handshakes... gig at the Red House in Sheffield in autumn 2011, wherein he explained in compelling, convincing detail to several of us present how the business model of Sheffield staple Hendersons Relish is a thing of wonder. If only I'd known him twenty years earlier, I could have reproduced that in my Economics A-Level exam and maybe not failed it with a single digit percentage score...

J xx

(A Sheffield person's worst nightmare. Good job it comes out of the taps, too. Picture is author's own)

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 25/09/2026).
Click here for a glossary explaining TML features.
Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

MELANIE A. DAVIS & THE MADNESS - Party of the Millennial (2026)

JANE & BARTON - I Want to Be with You (1983)

MORPHINE - Cocoon (1999/2026)

DAG FÖR DAG – Silence as the Verb (2010)

EUROTASTIC
P LION - Happy Children (1983)

STRAIGHT IN AT… September 26th, 2004
BRIAN WILSON - Wonderful (29)
THE CONCRETES - Seems Fine (52)

PLANETTE AUTOMATIC - Dance Around (2026)

HER SPACE HOLIDAY - Silent Films (1999)

ALE HOP & TITI BAKORTA - Bonne année (2024)

THE PINEY GIR COUNTRY ROADSHOW - Great Divide (2006)

THE FAMOUS BOYFRIEND - At Least We’re Trying (1998)

IF WE DO, WE’LL KEEP IT ALIVE
FINNMARK! - Brännö (2013)

NO LANGUAGE IN OUR LUNGS
THE DIVINE COMEDY - Europe by Train (1993)

DENZEL CURRY & KENNETH BLUME ft Yebba - Difference (2026)

THE JASMINE MINKS - Cut Me Deep (1987)

INNER MAGIC featuring RUTH RADELET - Underground (2026)

CORNERSHOP - Something Makes You Feel Like (2012)

DOCH DER COUNTDOWN LÄUFT
HELEN LUNDY TRIO - Tanz mit (2002)

STRAIGHT IN AT… September 26th, 2004
ZEN - Conundrum (97)
DEVENDRA BANHART - Little Yellow Spider (79)

SALT WATER CRIMINALS - Supermodel (2026)

THE PRESETS - Talk Like That (2008)

AD NAUSEAM - Little Life Little Wonder (1989-1991)

BILL JONES - Hey Away (2003)

IN LOVING MEMORY: Linda Bean-Pardee
THE CHELSEA CURVE - Ride (2026)

THE LONG GOODBYE
SPACEMEN 3 - Big City (Everybody I Know Can Be Found Here) (1991)

Saturday, 19 September 2026

LIST 272 – 19/09/2026

(Coup Dur - Mary Street Live, Sheffield 11/09/2026. Pictures are author's own)

Hello again,

This week's List was always going to have a Francophone start to it, just not the one I was anticipating, following news of the sad passing of Catherine Ringer a few days back. Reports generally indicate that she was taken quickly by an aggressive cancer at 68, which is no age.

Tributes have been generous and in no short supply, not least from Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks, periodic collaborators with either Catherine solo (as recently as 2022) or with her and the late Fred Chichin's pioneering pop duo Les Rita Mitsouko. "Artiste incomparable, amie incomparable. Catherine, tu nous manqueras. Bisous de tes amis Russell et Ron", they write. Nous aussi.

In including Marcia Baïla in List #257 (q.v.), I wrote, "Because sometimes it's possible to have a monster hit at home with a five and a half-minute long amalgam of squelchy electro-pop, chanson and bossa nova. As announcements of statements of intent go, this debut single from 1984 took some licking".

Amid all of the musical inventiveness, that force of nature voice was always front and centre. Powerful, characterful, emotive. Again, as I mused earlier in the year, perhaps the duo's first producer Conny Plank saw something of the Dietrich about Catherine, harking back to his own formative years as the diva's soundman.

Needless to say, a tribute to Catherine will appear on these pages at some point in the coming weeks.

And what of the French (and Belgians) I was expecting to write about first this week? Those of us who say yeah to a bit of yé-yé duly filled our boots in Sheffield last Friday, enjoying what was just the second ever British gig for Coup Dur.

Theirs is very much not a mere pastiche of that sixties sound, however. Smart, confident, melodic, witty, and inflected with more contemporary indiepop touches on occasion. It's additionally to the late 1970s they turned for cover versions rather than earlier, giving buoyant renditions of both Devo's Uncontrollable Urge (another originally Conny Plank-produced track mentioned this week, coincidence fans) and Part Time Punks by Television Personalities.

Coup Dur's debut 10" released in May was cheekily entitled The English Want... Coup Dur, and tonight they very definitely did.

Big thanks as always to Elodie, Chris and Madeline for putting on such splendid entertainment, and to Nick Godfrey of Precious Recordings for putting out the headliners' stuff and encouraging them over here in the first place. Given Nick's and my shared background of sometimes working for the Racing Post, I did wonder whether he might have fancied paring a trip up to see Coup Dur with one to the St Leger at Doncaster the day after. He'd have seen history being made, too. Either way, I still owe you a pint from Indietracks 2019, kind sir.

***

(Precious Metals - Mary Street Live, Sheffield 11/09/2026. Pictures are author's own)

Coup Dur's support act belatedly brings us on to the selections for this week's List. The festive costumes from the last time I'd seen Precious Metals five days before Xmas were inevitably missing, but all of the wide-eyed vim of their repertoire was still present and correct - and indeed landed with me even better this time, thanks in part to Mary Street Live's clearer PA system and acoustics.

This was a great run through tracks old and new, from those whose jangles and dual female harmonies brought to mind Talulah Gosh to the more crunching tones and riffs of recent track Pigeon, included this week.

It was also grand to witness the deployment of an Omnichord on stage, almost certainly the first I've seen since Cris Romero of The Royal Landscaping Society accompanied himself entirely on one for an Indietracks tent session back in 2015. More Omnichords in pop, please. They're quirky and fun.

(Cris Romero of The Royal Landscaping Society at the Omnichord - Indietracks festival, 25/07/2015. Pictures is author's own)

In addition to helping putting on the bands, Madeline went the extra yard and supplied a tremendous (mostly) Francophone pop playlist on Spotify by way of further recommended listening. I'm certainly gorging myself on it at the moment.

One of just two tracks on there that I'd had earmarked to appear in the Fabriqué en France feature on That Music List before long anyway, Main dans la main is top-notch electropop fun from Elli et Jacno, mainstays of seminal French punk band The Stinky Toys previously.

Jacno, or Denis Quilliard to his mum, also released a smattering of tremendous instrumental albums, some not entirely dissimilar to this single but rawer in execution and on occasion veering into similar territory to earlyish Durutti Column. They're well worth your time also.

Fun fact #1. A dedicated smoker, Denis's stagename of Jacno was taken from the graphic artist who drew the Gallic helmet logo of Gauloises cigarettes.

***

Of all of the new or recent tracks included this week, I don't think any are newer or more recent than The Rabbit, the a-side of a single released last Friday which signifies the return of Nat Johnson & The Figureheads.

There's not been much recorded output from Nat since her relocation to the north east a while back, and the logistics of members spread far and wide are, by her own admission, likely to put paid to any hopes of full band gigs in support of these new tracks.

Even so, it's a joy to have Nat back, that clear voice and impeccable songcraft all as present and correct as before; and I'll never not be kindly disposed towards Nat's work following her temporarily reassembled Monkey Swallows The Universe's delivering of one of the single most poignant sets I ever saw.

(Nat Johnson pictured during the last ever Monkey Swallows the Universe performance - Indietracks festival, 30/07/2017. Picture is author's own)

Indietracks, 2017. Already known in advance to be the final final MSTU gig - no further reunions thereafter. Emotional enough already, but their playing a cover of a song by Slow Down Tallahassee, in memory of that band's late and much missed Claire Turley, had the Sheffield indiepop contingent in the crowd in tears. Claire's widower Ian was present among them. Heart-rending scenes and a generous tribute from and to equally generous performers.

Fun fact #2. One thing connecting the Figureheads and the subsequent choice on the List from early-1980s post-punks I'm So Hollow is that they each feature a former Sheffield University Library colleague of mine, Chris Loftus and Jane Antcliff respectively. There are more besides them still working here whilst also recording and playing. It's going to get to the stage that I'm going to need to embark on a however short lived music career before I retire, just so as not to let the side down. I play a mean comb and paper.

Saturday, 12 September 2026

LIST 271 - 12/09/2026

(The Burgers - Sidney & Matilda, Sheffield 06/09/2026. Pictures are author's own)

Hello again,

Depending on when you read this (and the analytics suggest my posts gain most visits midweek), I'll hopefully have enjoyed seeing either French-Belgian combo Coup Dur at 95 Mary Street in Sheffield, or else Spratleys and Panixphere at the Brudenell in Leeds.

Ideally both, though three gigs in a week might be a bit of a liberty, if not an outright dereliction of familial duty. Naughty daddy.

The photos shared above come from the first of those three gigs in a week, the four-band feature at Sidney & Matilda last Sunday which I trailed on these pages a short while before. And yes, that is a puppet drummer you can see.

Believe it or not, Sunday wasn't the first time I'd seen a punk-pop band from the other side of the world with a percussionist made of cloth.

However, whereas Yumi Yumi's "drummer" Tom was a teddy bear unavailingly tasked with getting the drum machine he was sitting on to work (I wished I'd photographed it at the time), Drummy Burger from Beijing-via-Glasgow headline act The Burgers actually moved his arms along broadly in time to the music.

I was reminded of those sunglasses-wearing, guitar-wielding novelty flowers from years ago, only in puppet form and with one leg missing, apparently stolen. Having shown them some footage of the gig, my kids want to set up a charity fundraiser to buy Drummy a new leg. They're all heart.

The Burgers, the only act of the quartet new to me, were a great find, energetic, righteous, and evidently not above baiting Joe Strummer. A fun finish to a top evening, one earlier graced with a typically winsome/charming/hilarious half hour or so with All Ashore! (do write in if you can answer for them the mystery of why nits never travel from your head to your pubes) and the terrific, inventive pounding of Duck.

The last-named haven't appeared on this blog half enough, all things considered - and not since the first List back from its hiatus (q.v. List #237). Further fresh output is apparently imminent, and the set indeed closed with a newie, having previously taken in a touching cover of Dolly Parton's The Bargain Store.

For now, it's a pleasure to include 2020 track New Super Power, a defiant railing against society's attempts to make women of a certain age to all intents and purposes invisible, and also against the notion that a lurch to the ideological right is inevitable once hitting that sort of age. Cue much clapping in time and chanting back of "no I won't go" to this one by all of us present, who indeed aren't going anywhere.

(Duck - Sidney & Matilda, Sheffield 06/09/2026. Pictures are author's own)

***

Getting to the venue in time to see Pink Opaque play again would have rendered it a yet more fabulous evening - my apologies, Danielle and Pete.

I still got to chat with them both variously about football, Only Connect (I'm not sure how many of this year's intake of teams would trouble Danielle's mighty Francophiles), Grimbarian-themed space missions, Skep Wax Records and how-the-hell-are-our-kids-so-old-now, however, so it's all good.

Some of that chat with Pete concentrated on their latest solo incarnation Mariner 9, a name surely not arrived at by accident given Pete's Grimsby roots, and an electronic project blessed with joyous washes of Jean-Michel Jarre style synths and wide-eyed optimism, as evident in the track I've included this week.

Pete and Danielle's stance on AI use in music is of course a matter of record also, either or both of the duo having taken aim in such as the Pink Opaque track Bringing Back the Humans and a number of social media posts. It hardly needs stating, therefore, that We Love You from the Moon similarly contains no traces whatsoever of anything arrived at via a large language model, generative chatbot or similar. No way, no how.

Compare and contrast with one Jovanka van Wilsdorf, who as one half of turn of the century German duo Quarks created four studio albums of warm, inventive electropop of a kind not a million miles removed from what I see and hear some of my Sheffield friends producing to the present day.

However, in researching Quarks members' subsequent history ahead of this week's inclusion of the engaging, twitchy Schneider TM remix of Fallen, I discovered that Jovanka has since picked up the AI baton and run further with it than most.

"A creative AI consultant, speaker and initiator specializing in social robotics", her website notes, going on to highlight variously her work as musical director of concerts performed by an AI-driven robot; as the co-creator of DIANA, the self-claimed first ever AI Song Contest; as a prolific public speaker and lecturer on AI songwriting and production; and so on.

The subtitles of some of her speeches - muse and monster; between hype and horror; good bot, bad bot - suggest that Jovanka isn't necessarily indifferent to the wider ethical concerns of AI, and her attempts to create and consolidate a "female AI" are broadly compatible with her other initiatives such as the creation of a Female* Producer Prize in conjunction with Music Women* Germany (note, by the way, the asterisks - the Gendersternchen or "gender star" used in Germany to signify gender inclusivity, thus opening up this award to trans women also).

Not wholly unimpressive when written down like that, and for the greater part certainly a more virtuous, empowering use of AI than draining dry another reservoir just to produce a pub quiz poster or picture of present day you with a 1980s hairdo.

Even so, is this music? Ought it count as such? Really and truly?

***

Very much not created with AI - and arguably too idiosyncratic and multifaceted for AI to have been able to build it even had the likes of Suno been a thing way back in 1989 - is this week's choice of A Loved Album, This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This! by Pop Will Eat Itself.

One member of my trio of all-time favourite albums, alongside Skywriting by The Field Mice (q.v. List #238) and one other that'll feature on these pages before the year's out, it almost singlehandedly blew away my ignorant belief of hitherto that studio albums were incapable of sustaining the excitement and interest of either a 7" single (and it was 7" singles back then) or a well put-together compilation.

It was described on release as more of a sound collage than an album by the likes of Trouser Press, and the use of short, linking pieces to maintain a continuous flow of sound - a technique adapted from the previous year's touring mates Public Enemy - only served to harden that impression (whilst also making jabbing down the pause button at the precise split second when making mixtapes for mates that bit trickier).

It was, and remains, an album designed to grab your attention from the word go, and hold it unrelentingly.

For a work so heavily indebted to, and continuously knowingly referencing, assorted sci-fi films, comics, books, musicians and so on, it nevertheless maintains a generous, inclusive feel throughout. If you possess a sound working knowledge of the output of, say, Alan Moore, Isaac Asimov, Mantronix, Gilbert Shelton, Rod Serling or The Jungle Brothers, here is a band who speaks your language and proves the point over an entire album. If you don't (and I don't), you're more than welcome to enjoy the thrills and innovations as an equal anyway.

Can U Dig It? (the single with which they finally cracked the UK top 40) and Wise Up! Sucker have long since featured in Lists, and with so many other highlights on This Is the Day... there was zero temptation on my part to repeat either. I'm surprised I've let you go this long without any iteration of Def Con One, mind, and that matter is rectified here alongside three other inclusions.

(With the release of This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This!, so began years of me drawing the various Designers Republic PWEI robots, monsters, spacemen, etc. all over virtually every single school book or folder - doubtless to the exasperation or befuddlement of the teachers and lecturers who had to handle them. This example is from off of an A-Level maths folder in 1992, hence the Bulletproof! lyrical quote. I've loads more somewhere in the loft).

***

By the time This Is the Day... was released in early 1989, a thrash band by the name of Panixphere had already been in a fitful existence for almost six years.

Originally conceived as a live-only entity by Bic Hayes, later of Cardiacs, Levitation and Dark Star, it's taken the small matter of 43 years for the stars to align sufficiently for Panixphere - nowadays coalesced into a trio of Bic and Cardiacs/Ad Nauseam buddies Jon Poole and Bob Leith - to put out their debut album.

Hence, at last, Gods and Zeros, released in July and enjoyed by me continuously since.

That Panixphere has gone through sustained periods of inertia over the past four decades is putting it mildly. The band had previously been at its most active in the early 1990s, with Bic then flanked by none other than Tim Smith himself and the soon-to-be Cardiacs duo of Poole and Leith. After which, not terribly much happened in the life of this act for around a quarter of a century, but plenty in the lives of the other associated bands mentioned.

Three tracks written by Jon in this period (including Angleworm Angel, available on Gods and Zeros under its original title of Perfic) ended up in some form or other on Cardiacs' Sing to God magnum opus in 1996. More Money Than God, meanwhile, was written by Tim at the same time as Perfic, but has never appeared on record in any form, until now. It's a genuine pleasure to include it here this week.

Having had almost half a lifetime to keep the diary clear, by the way, will all three current Panixpherians be present for their dates alongside Spratleys this month? Alas, no - Jon's gone off touring with Adam Ant...

Blimey I can go on.

Had we better just move on to the other highlights? You may also like:

New or recent fare from Windy & Carl Meet Optigan Conservatory, Kiwi Jr (bringing to mind the same Rockford Files theme Minimoog stylings of such as Boy Genius's Old New England), SILVERWINGKILLER and four-plus minutes of pure, anti-Trump invective from Massive Attack & Tom Waits (or Sexy Tom Waits, as you'll recall The Yummy Fur referring to him as).

Far from the only example of cheery music meets heavy subject matter from the 1980s, as Italo Disco duo Righeira discuss the dropping of the atomic bomb.

The sole UK top 40 hit for rockers-turned-new-wavers After The Fire, though an English language cover of Falco's Der Kommissar would subsequently do better still for them in the US. The loon you can see on drums is one Ivor Twidell (later Iva Twydell), soon to leave on an ultimately unavailing attempt to make a greater breakthrough as a solo frontperson. Where is he now, one wonders.

Carl Puttnam of Cud still looking ridiculously young in the promo for 1990's Magic, already their tenth single and the final one before the leap to a major label and a degree of chart stardom. Seeing them live at the Leadmill in Sheffield as part of their 2012 "Jubilee" tour was one of Linda's and my earliest date nights out; the band were great, certain lairy misogynistic elements of their fanbase, not so much.

J xx

Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 10/09/2026).
Click here for a glossary explaining TML features.
Click here for a directory of updated older Lists.

KIM DEAL - Nobody Loves You More (2024)

COMET GAIN - You Can Hide Your Love Forever (2001)

WINDY & CARL MEET OPTIGAN CONSERVATORY - Conductor (2026)

THE RAPTURE - Get Myself Into It (2006)

KNEECAP - Parful (2024)

EUROTASTIC
RIGHEIRA – Vamos a la Playa (1985)

COMPILED BY CHET & BEE (AND SOMETIMES TIM)
CUD - Magic (1990)

MASSIVE ATTACK & TOM WAITS - Boots on the Ground (2026)

AFTER THE FIRE - One Rule for You (1979)

DUCK - New Super Power (2020)

(No video available - please click on this Bandcamp link)

SNUGGLE - Dust (2025)

READERS WIFES - Bitch at the Brits (2003)

SCIENTISTROCK
MARINER 9 - We Love You from the Moon (2026)

A LOVED ALBUM: Pop Will Eat Itself - This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This! (1989)
POP WILL EAT ITSELF - Def Con One
POP WILL EAT ITSELF - Inject Me